"They say the elevators are going still!" another one exclaimed.
"Where's the fire-escapes?"
"Must be on the rear or over by the alley. There ain't none this side, sure enough."
"Yes, they're in back," the architect said authoritatively.
He tried to think just where they were and where they opened in the building, but could not remember. A voice wailed dismally through a megaphone:—
"Look out, boys! Back!"
On the edge of the cornice appeared three little figures with a line of hose. At that height they looked like willing gnomes on the crust of a flaming world.
"Gee! Look at that roof! Look at it!"
The cry from the megaphone had come too late. Suddenly, without warning, the top of the hotel rose straight into the air, and from the sky above there sounded a great report, like the detonation of a cannon at close range. The roof had blown up. For an instant darkness followed, as if the flame had been smothered, snuffed out. Then with a mighty roar the pent-up gases that had caused the explosion ignited and burst forth in a broad sheet of beautiful blue flame, covering the doomed building with a crown of fire.
Hart looked for the men with the hose. One had caught on the sloping roof of a line of bay windows, and clung there desperately seven stories above the ground.